North Carolina has dropped one place since last year to rank 35th in the nation according to an annual KIDS COUNT data report about the overall well-being of children in the United States. This data report determines and ranks states on the basis of performance in sixteen level indicators across four domains; economic well-being, family and community, health, and education.

North Carolina’s drop to the 35th spot largely results from the state’s lackluster performance in improving its economic well-being. Currently, North Carolina is ranked 38th in the nation for economic well-being, three spots below last year’s ranking. This data report breaks down economic well-being into four categories, each of which North Carolina failed to show any progress. The KIDS COUNT State Profile for North Carolina reports that twenty-six percent of children are impoverished and thirty-four percent of parents lack secure employment in this state alone. Accordingly, in North Carolina, the amount of children living in households with high housing burden costs has seen a four percent increase since 2005, and ten percent of teens are currently not working or in school.

Looks like a memo came down to GOP Governors (including NC Governor Pat McCrory) who don’t want to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act: Just say “Medicaid is broken” again and again and again. In NC, Medicaid has the lowest growth rate in the US and has helped do things like make NC’s infant mortality rate drop at one of the biggest rates in the nation. But don’t let those pesky facts get in the way of a good talking point!

The NC House released its version of the budget today, and, thankfully, the House’s budget does not include the substantial cut in health care coverage for pregnant women that was part of the NC Senate’s budget. While a very good start showing that legislators in the House recognized the serious detrimental health effects for mother and baby of cutting health coverage, this issue will not be going completely away just yet. Since the NC Senate included the cut for pregnant women it in its budget this cut could come back at any time. Stay tuned.

I don’t know if I can take more of these buried anti-health gems in the NC Senate’s budget, but here’s another from my friends at the NC Alliance for Health. The Senate eliminates $1.2 million in the NC Department of Transportation budget for greenway trails, already an underfunded program. Even this $1.2 million in state money allows NC to get $4.5 million in matching funds to build more bike and pedestrian trails all over the state. Just for comparison $1.2 million is less than what it costs to build one mile of highway in NC. Greenways have a positive effect on real estate prices and home sales, in addition to being nice places to keep healthy. This is yet another budget cut that seems more ideological than anything else.

Today in the News and Observer I detail yet another one of these crazy changes hidden deep in the GOP budget recently passed by the NC Senate. This one is a doozy—it kicks off pregnant women who currently get Medicaid and tells them to go buy private insurance. A half-hearted attempt at political cover is provided by saying that somehow (it’s unworkable) the state will pay part of the private premium if these lower income women qualify. However, under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid was supposed to be expanded, not cut, an expansion already rejected by the NC Senate. The latest cynical attempt to attack “Obamacare” just doesn’t work and it ignores the great bipartisan legacy of our state’s efforts to attack our awful infant mortality rate problem:

Back in 1989, shortly after news that North Carolina had the highest infant mortality rate of any state in the nation, Republican Gov. Jim Martin created a task force to seek solutions to this national embarrassment after he already had been pushing for changes to address the problem. Solutions championed by Martin included expanding Medicaid to many more pregnant women in 1987.